Skip to main content

KEEP UP PRESSURE ON CORRUPTION


There has been a flurry of activity surrounding corruption in recent weeks, with a few public officials caught red handed taking bribes.

The public deprived of services because of a few greedy individuals are understandably gleeful. 

However they are also those who are a bit sceptical, wondering whether this campaign will last or will peter out along the way.

It is heartening to see that President Yoweri Museveni has put his full weight behind the latest attempt and provides a positive signal to all parties concerned. He should be supported by every well-meaning Ugandan so that this drive does not fizzle out in a few weeks.

I choose to be optimistic about this anti-corruption drive, because rolling back the endemic that corruption has become, is one of the first steps we need to take towards attaining middle income status as a nation and for any other meaningful development we hope to see in the future.

We see it in our daily lives.

Beyond the morality of not taking what is not yours, corruption has wide reaching negative effects not only for the economy but for our individual advancement.

At the most basic level corruption concentrates resources in a few hands. A billion shillings stolen from the state coffers or extorted from an investor, is money that would have built several classroom blocks or treated patients at our public hospitals or graded a few roads. It would have not only improved the standard of living of hundreds or even thousands of Ugandans, but would also give them a chance to climb up the social ladder by providing a better education or underwrote a healthier life or created access to markets for goods and services.

Secondly, the corrupt in an attempt to launder their money buy assets such as land and buildings or go into business. That would not be a bad thing and may even be beneficial to the economy through increased economic activity, job creation and maybe even increased tax collection. But because the corrupt do not have to factor in the cost of money in their business plans, they distort the market for everyone, squeezing the genuine businessmen out and often times damaging the market irreparably as they also collapse for lack of business acumen.

But corruption has an even deadlier impact on society. If it thrives it provides the wrong incentives to the young and impressionable. It destroys the argument for hard and diligent work as the way to achieve wealth that is durable and sustainable. Why slog hours at a desk, spend years climbing up the corporate ladder or even take the risks and work tirelessly to build a durable business?

Our youth are being seduced by the fast life attained even faster, realising too late that the old fashioned virtues of honesty, thrift and good reputation are what one should aim for rather than making a quick buck.

This last point is particularly worrying. Because if we do not reconfigure our society’s incentives, corruption far from being the new normal will be the only way to do anything, making our economy unattractive to investors and development partners – local or foreign dooming our nation to mediocrity and hopelessness for years to come

A few years ago it was estimated that up to sh500b annually goes missing from state coffers. This figure has probably grown since it was first mooted, but for an economy like ours that is a lot of money and missed opportunity to uplift the living standards of thousands of Ugandans.

According to next financial year’s Budget Framework Paper, government has earmarked just over a hundred billion shillings for maintenance of roads around the country. If a road is tarmarced or even just graded and made all weather, it unlocks the economic potential of whole areas. The farmers can produce more because the trucks can get closer to their fields, the transporters save money in wear and tear costs from driving on smoother roads, the end consumer gets goods at better prices because of increased competition from numerous suppliers.

It would not be a stretch to say that for every shilling used on roads, a few more shillings in additional economic activity for an area’s population is the result.

But when a handful of people eat this money, the net effect is minimal for the society at large – they may buy houses, distribute some charity but are most likely than not going to book a holiday abroad.
That the fight against corruption is critical and urgent cannot be overstated. The benefits of a reduction in corruption will be immediate and far reaching. This anti-corruption drive must succeed.

(APRIL 2017)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

GOOD BUSINESS SENSE WILL HELP OUR AGRICULTURE

The recent drought has at once alerted us to our deficiencies in our agriculture production and reawakened a drive to revitalise the sector. How is it that a country with half the arable land in the region has people suffering starvation? How is that our crops dried up in the fields when a fifth of our land mass is under water? And on a macro level how is it that the 70 percent of our people who rely on the land directly for a living, account for 30 percent of our economic output or GDP? Given our natural endowments in land, weather and manpower it is obvious that we are performing well below our potential. Reversing this trend of affairs should be the concern of everybody in the country. A lot of the debate has revolved around increasing production, value addition and market access locally and internationally. And rightly so. Taking one example the Uganda Coffee Development Authority says that the average yield per hectare is half a ton of coffee. But meanwhile with...

BEWARE OF THE CON MAN

I read with a mixture of horror and sympathy for the victims of the latest Ponzi scheme gone bad in town. Last week a company, Global Cryptocurrencies Ltd, collapsed and along with it went billions of shillings, by police estimates, of their clients’ money. The company working out of an obscure office on Namirembe road, managed to rope in all manner of clients with the promise of magical returns – 40% a week! I have been in business for most of my life, if I could be guaranteed 40% week I would sell everything I own and jump in with both feet. Or maybe not. And this is why. They say if anything is too good to be true, it is. If you can get an annual return of 40% on your investment you will be doing extremely well. So if you put in a million shillings in your business and walk away at the end of the year with sh400,000 after taxes you have found a good thing, and I would like to be your friend. I have seen my share of scam artists and con men. Below are my fast an...

WELL DONE UGANDA REVENUE AUTHORITY BUT …

Over the weekend President Yoweri Museveni commissioned the new head office of the Uganda Revenue Authority, an imposing structure that is set to dominate the Nakawa skyline for some time to come. Congratulations are in order to URA for the construction of such an aesthetically appealing building, which I hope wills set the pace for other developments not only in the area but in Kampala and even Uganda as a whole. I know the pride that comes with having completed such a massive build for the initiators and implementors. The new 22-story structure has allowed the tax man to fold back all his offices from around the city back to the head office, a move they estimate will save them sh7b annually. Using simple math the sh140b will pay for itself in 20 years. The move is seen as precursor to a government move to build a ministerial compound in Bwebajja, where all ministries will be relocated sometime in the future. I have seen comments that such actions are evidence that...

COME HELP BEAT BACK HIV/AIDS

Uganda has made tremendous strides in containing the AIDS pandemic. For some of us who were around in the 1980s and saw the worst effects of the AIDS pandemic, the way the country has contained the disease is not what we had envisaged back then. Ignorance, stigma and lack of drugs surrounding the disease saw thousands die horrible deaths – wasting away, tortured by opportunistic diseases and being shirked by family and a society out fear.  The doomsayers were projecting a major fall in our population, a collapse of the economy and a total breakdown of social cohesion. That the country is still around and fighting back the disease successfully, could not have been envisaged in those scary days of the 1980s when the disease came into the public conscious. Thankfully rather than sweep the problem under the carpet like many of the neighbouring countries, President Yoweri Museveni led a fight back against AIDS that had at its core widespread dissemination of infor...

NOT ONLY THE HARDWARE BUT THE SOFTWARE TOO

In the middle of September the United Nations released its annual Human Development Indicator (HDI). This index serves as an indicator of the quality of life of a country’s people by measuring the health, education, inequality, poverty and security standards. Aside from the statistical measures of development like GDP growth, this is obviously a better measure of how people are actually doing. In this year’s HDI report Uganda was ranked 162 out of 189 countries with a HDI score of 0.516. The index goes from zero to one, the nearer you are to one the better. Our score puts us in the low human development category. But as bad as that sounds we have been worse. In 1990, the earliest year that these figures were compiled our score was 0.311 even the UN recognises that we have improved 66 percent in the last three decades. According to the UN figures life expectancy has risen to 60.2 years   from 45.5 in 1990; expected years of schooling has doubled to 11.6 fr...

WE NEED A BETTER SOLUTION FOR KAMPALA TRAFFIC

I am sure I am not the only one feeling it. Kampala’s traffic is becoming increasingly unbearable. Even the removal of roundabouts around the city seem to have an opposite effect to the intended purpose of easing traffic flow in the city. Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) has an ambitious plan of flyovers, underground tunnels and railway transport, which should help the cause, I hope. The snarl ups that we are coming fast accustomed to, are not only an issue of teeth grinding inconvenience but have a real cost on our economy by hampering and increasing the cost of doing business. A recent World Bank report suggests that as an economy, we are losing about sh3trillion annually due to traffic jams. The losses come in form of delayed deliveries, higher fuel consumption and the health consequences of seating in a smoke filled environment. To put this in perspective this is the combined budget of the health, agriculture and ICT ministries in this year’s budget. Or ...